Six new research projects
were approved by the Academic Committee in January 1998:

The Non-Existent Manuscript:
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Twentieth-century Apocryphal--Prof.
Cesare G. De Michelis, Tor Vergata University, Rome

Following previous research
done over several years, along with the publication of a number of articles
on the topic, Prof. De Michelis proposes a new philological examination
of the textual variants of the Protocols. This has led to a new
dating of the text to 1902–1903, and a new hypothesis about the milieu
in which the infamous forgery was produced, and about its Russian antisemitic
extremist authors.

Russian Jews between the
Reds and the Whites: Jews and the Anti-Bolshevik Movement--Prof. Oleg
Budnitskii, Rostov State Pedagogical University, Russia

Based mainly on Russian archival
sources, as well as the Hoover Archives at Stanford University, the research
focuses on the Russian White policy toward the Jews and the relationship
between its leaders and some Jewish leaders. Jewish participation in the
movement, the weight of antisemitism in White ideology, and in its propaganda
in local newspapers and leaflets, as well as the “Jewish Question” in White
diplomacy and in the publications of Russian émigrés of the
1920s, will be assessed.

This research will analyze
different forms of philosemitism during the Weimar period. Specific discourses
include that of the German political Left, the Liberals and the Socialists;
the conversionary philosemitism of the Protestant Right, and ambivalent
forms of intellectual philosemitism. In addition, other forms of philosemitism
such as Christian proselytism and the nexus of intermarriage and philosemitism
will be addressed.

Based on interviews with baptized
Russian Jews, some of whom emigrated to United States or Israel, the aim
of the research is to define their national and religious identity, the
role of experiencing antisemitism in keeping alive the sense of Jewish
ethnic identity even after baptism, as well as the dilemmas challenging
these Jewish converts when encountering antisemitism in the Russian Church.

Antisemitic Violence
in Hungary during the Period of Political Radicalization and the “White
Terror” (1919)

Dr Avigdor Löwenheim,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Using a recently available
collection of testimonies, the study will analyze the different types of
anti-Jewish violence carried out by the mob organized by Hungarian officers
under Admiral Horthy. Legal reports and accounts from local newspapers
will be used to round out the picture of these events. An assessment will
be made of the impact of the Hungarian Bolshevik revolution and the anti-Jewish
“White Terror” on relations between Hungarians and Jews during the 1930s
and the Hungarian antisemitic policy.

Extreme Right, Xenophobia,
and Antisemitism in Spain (1931–1982): The Political Use of the “Conspiracy
Theory”

Dr José L. Rodríguez
Jiménez, Complutense University, Madrid

Spain has experienced two
processes of transition to democratic regimes during the twentieth century
— in 1931, with the proclamation of the Second Republic, and after General
Franco’s death in 1975. In both cases, the “conspiracy theory” was used
to discredit and subvert the path to democracy. The research will focus
on the Spanish extreme Right discourse of tensions and dangers based on
the antisemitic myth of a world Jewish conspiracy.

Research Projects in Progress

Dr. Jean Ancel, Antisemitism
vs. Nationalism — Romania 1942

Dr. Olaf Blaschke, Jews
and Catholics in the German Empire

Dr. Jacob Borut, Antisemitism
in Jewish Everyday Life in the Weimar Republic

Prof. Benjamin Braude,
The
Image of the Jew in the Literature of Eastern Travel, 1350–1650: Power
and the Transition to Antisemitism

Dr. Slawomir Tokarsky,
The
Evolution of Jewish Economics and Political Mobilization of the Peasantry,
Antisemitism in Galicia 1868–1914

New Books

The following titles have
been published by researchers of the Center:

Simon Epstein, Histoire
du people Juif au XXe siècle. De 1914 à nos jours (Paris:
Hachette, 1998. A new and original survey of contemporary Jewish history
including the story of Zionism and the State of Israel, questioning some
traditional approaches to antisemitism and to the Jewish response to it.

Dalia Ofer and Lenore J.
Weitzman, eds., Women in the Holocaust (New Haven, Conn. and London:
Yale University Press, 1998). The special problems and particular vulnerabilities
of Jewish women during the Holocaust, as well as their unique responses
and changing roles is examined in this pathbreaking collection of articles
by notes scholars and survivors.

Mihail Sebastian, Jurnal
1935–1944 (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1997); French tr., Paris: Stock, 1998;
German tr., in preparation), ed. Gabriela Omat, with Introduction and Notes
by Leon Volovici. The diary of a well-known Jewish Romanian writer in the
most dramatic period in the history of the Romanian Jewish community. Sebastian
provides testimony on the antisemitic trends among the Romanian elite,
the anti-Jewish policy of the Antonescu regime, and the everyday life of
Romanian Jews in these years.

Felix Posen Fellowships

Congratulations

Manfred Böcker, a
Felix Posen Fellow, has received his doctoral degree from the Westfalische
Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany. His dissertation was
on The Antisemitism of the Radical Right during the Spanish Second Republic
(1931–1936)

Ph.D. Students

Ido Basok (Hebrew University),
Youth
Movements among Polish Jews in the Interwar Period

“The Expected and the Surprising
in the Damascus Affair (1840)” marked the publication of The Damascus
Affair: “Ritual Murder,” Politics, and the Jews in 1840, by Jonathan
Frankel. The evening was co-sponsored by the Zalman Shazar Center and the
Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. Participants
included Shmuel Almog, Jonathan Frankel, Richard I. Cohen, and Daniel Gutwein.